Prelude
Before I get to my plan, I'm going to copy and paste a comment Shaun T. made: "With an over abundance of fitness and nutrition information in this world it’s hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong. What’s right is what your body responds to!" I think that's so true and something I've been thinking about myself lately. I don't know when I read it, but it was only a few months ago, an article or two about how scientists are questioning the conventional wisdom that you have to eat breakfast. When I read that, I was a little taken aback. I mean, how many times have you heard that? I feel like I've heard some variant of that throughout my life. Something like, "people who skip meals tend to eat more calories over the course of a day" or whatever. And now they're saying it may not be true? Anyway, I read that and thought, "Okay, all bets are off." Now for me, I actually do prefer to eat breakfast and feel better when I do so it doesn't actually apply to me, but I'm going to be less judgmental when other people say they prefer not to eat breakfast. Like my mom, who if she works out in the morning won't eat breakfast beforehand because she says it makes her feel ill. Now I feel ill if I don't eat before a workout. And neither of us are wrong, you know?
So now I'm a believer in doing what works for you, even if it breaks all the rules. If you absolutely hate exercise and refuse to do it, you can work around it. If you hate salads (*raises hand*) you can work around that too. Let's say you read an article that says, "85% of people who made Change A lost weight." You might think, "Well, then it should work for me," and you implement it. It fails, and you try it again, and so on. But look - there's 15% of people that Change A didn't work for. They either stayed the same weight, or even gained. And 15% isn't insignificant. You could very easily be a part of that percentage. So even if everyone you know tells you that you absolutely have to eat breakfast, or exercise, or eat salads to lose weight, it's just not true. It's about what works for you, and even if you're the only person whom it works for in the world, that in itself is a good enough reason to keep doing it.
There's a reason I wrote all that. And that's because I feel like my plan might be considered extreme or untenable by some people, but it's generally what I've been doing since New Year's (with a few tweaks) and it's the first diet that's worked for me in five years. So I know this works for me and I'm not all that inclined to change it.
The Plan
I generally eat the same thing every day. Breakfast is black coffee (0) and a packet of either chocolate chip muffins (190) or blueberry muffins (180). Lunch is chicken ramen (380), sometimes with vegetables. Dinner either breaded tilapia (180) or a crab cake (190) and a potato (~330) with Lawry's seasoning (0). Generally that's a total of around 1100 calories.
I know, it's 100 calories less than the generally agreed upon minimum of what I should be eating in a day. But I need to be burning 1,150 calories a day and I generally burn 2,250 calories a day. Also that food's not the healthiest ever. But it's simultaneously easy to make and hard to binge on, and it's really hard for me to find that combination. Now yeah, I could bring the calories up by 100 and add in 100 calories of exercise. The problem with that is that while I generally like to exercise and 100 calories isn't that much, I'm never going to exercise every day. Plus I feel a little overwhelmed in my life already (who doesn't, but still), and the thought of adding even one more thing to my to do list makes me want to fall to the ground and curl up in a ball. So I only want to exercise when I have the inclination and can fit it in. In other words, to keep exercise optional and not mandatory, to take some pressure off myself.
Also, for a reward at the end of the week I like to walk around the mall browsing for a few hours (or take a quick trip to Marshall's if I'm short on time or energy) and buy something in around the $20 range.
Long Story Short
Around 1100 calories a day of set meals, exercise optional, reward at the end of the week.
Epilogue
Sorry about the essay. And don't be too mad at me for eating so little, guys. XD I love youuuuuu.